Crazy Sorrow

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

I once started a novel titled Crazy Pussy, but abandoned it later as an exercise in bad judgment.  It was based on a woman I once knew.  Unspeakable things had been done to her.  She was a strange mix of beauty and darkness, tenderness and rage, passion and loathing.  She captured me without my having fired a shot in my own defense.  Our’s was a raging roller coaster of earthly delights and bone deep horror.

Dylan – Tambourine Man

One of the most seductive things about her was how easy she was to please.  She would just beam at every thoughtful gesture and every minor kindness.  It made me want to shower her with same.  If I stopped on the way to her place and bought her a rose, you’d have thought I had built her her very own Taj Mahal.  This woman could make me feel pure joy.

Lucind Williams JOY

I began blogging two years ago come the thirtieth of this month.  I have poured virtually all of my spare time since then into that effort, my activism and the making of art.  I’ve done little else.  I’ve not indulged much in entertainment, just enough to stay sane.  I’ve not read fiction, which I deeply love, and I haven’t dated.

At 56 my opus magnus is not done and I guess I’m feeling the pressure.  How odd that that stage in my artistic life coincides with the neocon assault on America.  I have never in my life worked so hard for anything as I have to defeat these bastards.  Who knows, my major work might turn out to be to drive the final nail into their coffin.  I would love nothing more.  I never thought of myself as a political artist but circumstances have forced me into one.  That’s just fine with me.  I’ve always admired art that serves a higher cause – and the rescue of our country could not be a more noble one (IMHO).

I guess I’m just feeling sentimental at the approach of the 2 year anniversary of my first blog post at dailykos.  But I have other reasons for being turned inward, and they have to do with that girl I was telling you about and another one I met more recently.

Having lived like a monk for a couple of years, and having found myself lusting after inappropriate partners of late, I decided I needed to get out more.  And not having the time for that, I turned to the net and signed up at a dating site…figured I might better go meet someone appropriate before things got weird.  Well…sigh…

I tried to filter by making certain things clear:  activist, hippie, committed protester, rabid blogger, no time for the Braves kind of guy.  And that has proved largely ineffective.  I did meet one interesting woman though.  Her name was Joy.

Joy was a special needs teacher, from New York, a counter culture type – my type in other words.  We hit it off right away.  The things we had in common were crazy, and the chemistry was good.  We chatted for quite a while before meeting, neither of us wanting to jump into anything – especially since we were both sort of rare finds for our area – chances of it going bad wrong were too great.  We developed a nice little online relationship and came to look forward to our chat sessions, and one night she said let’s just meet now.  So we did.  We clicked and spent that first evening in each other’s arms on a park bench groovin’ on oxytocin – felt like heaven.

We met for a second time at a restaurant half way between her place and mine, had a nice dinner, clicked some more.  She was artistic and quirky, smart and funny, and we got along like we’d always known each other.  But later that night there was both a coming closer and a pushing away.  In one evening I went from this simpatico guy with whom she’d made an authentic connection to possibly just another crazy guy she’d met on the Internet.  I sensed a sudden and very definite pulling back.  I wondered if it was something I said.

The following evening she im’ed me and we chatted.  She said she needed to slow things down because she had issues.  I said I’d be as patient as she needed me to be.  She said she didn’t think we wanted the same things, and I replied that yeah she probably was right, we probably didn’t – though I hadn’t thought of it up to that point.

At some point she explained she was a victim of abuse and that’s what she’d been getting at in previous references to issues.  It broke my heart to hear that.  It reminded me of that woman from long ago who had been sexually molested by her father from the age of nine.  How heartbreaking is it that people can do such things to little girls?

I made a hard headed and hard hearted decision, the first of its kind I have made in a long time – and I don’t know if it’s good or it’s bad.  I just know I saw no other way out of the dilemma.

I told her of my previous experience.  I explained that it wasn’t that I was judgmental or unfeeling, but that it was just the opposite.  I am all accepting and deeply empathetic.  I told her of how I had gotten to experience all of my former friend’s pain, rage and darkness.  It totally disrupted my life and when I tried to pull away from her she stalked me.  She showed up at two different places of work creating scenes, she followed me bumping my car from behind on one occasion at speed, she broke into my apartment twice, she left hours of crazy phone messages, she called my elderly parents and told them I had gotten her pregnant and dumped her (not true).  I actually went to court to get an order of protection against her.  It was a nightmare.

I then had to tell Joy that I am a man on a mission and I cannot let anything divert my trajectory.  Between my son, my work and my activism I have a full life.  I cannot afford for anything to consume my life – it is already consumed.  I have no delusions about my ability to save America, the world or humanity, but I feel a powerful, overwhelming impulse to try – in the crazy hope that my efforts may add in some small way to those of millions of others.  I simply have no room in my life for anything that detracts from this effort.  And so as powerfully as I feel the urge to somehow come to the rescue of this dear woman, I cannot.  And it makes me very sad.

This Joy

Just then the sun went behind a cloud

And I was enveloped in darkness

OPOL

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    • OPOL on April 19, 2008 at 22:12
      Author

     Then a woman said, ‘Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.’

    And he answered:

    Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

    And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

    And how else can it be?

    The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

    Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

    And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

    When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

    When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

    Some of you say, ‘Joy is greater than sorrow,’ and others say, ‘Nay, sorrow is the greater.’

    But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

    Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

    Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

    Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

    When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

    Kahlil Gibran

  1. the world might finally see the light and find its way home to peace.

    You’ve been putting a candle in the window for two years now, OPOL, and it keeps burning brighter, and more people are seeing its glow, and are putting candles in their windows because of you.  

    Thank you, my friend, you inspire all of us.

     

  2. that is so sad.  Had a date once with somebody who’d been abused, and…it was as you said: the leaning forward then the pulling away.

    How can anyone destroy a young child like that?  I’ve known a few grown women who have been raped, and I will not downgrade their trauma, but when it’s a child…

    Sometimes it’s just easier to be alone, to blog, to work for a better society…but…

    OPOL, I am so sorry for you and for her, too.  At least I am single from choice, not from the sort of emotional devastation that comes from being abused.

    Wishing you the best.

    • kj on April 19, 2008 at 22:50

    went wonky when i tried to post earlier… so maybe all that was needed was a hug from me, to you, OPOL (if a hug is okay!)

    • Alma on April 19, 2008 at 22:54

    But I hear you brother

    Between my son, my work and my activism I have a full life.  I cannot afford for anything to consume my life – it is already consumed.  I have no delusions about my ability to save America, the world or humanity, but I feel a powerful, overwhelming impulse to try – in the crazy hope that my efforts may add in some small way to those of millions of others.  I simply have no room in my life for anything that detracts from this effort.

    My life is sidelined too.  We will prevail.

  3. your light will bring her home to you

    you’re a lovely and gentle man, OPOL. and until you find your 3D gal, you’ve always got the women of DD …

  4. A 1??   🙁

    • srkp23 on April 19, 2008 at 23:20

    Hear you and love you.  

    • OPOL on April 19, 2008 at 23:26
      Author

    Thanks for your comments everyone.

    • dkmich on April 19, 2008 at 23:37

    You are a caring and good person.  Just when you least expect it, you will find a good friend who will never let you go.    

    • RiaD on April 19, 2008 at 23:43

    sorry it took so long to comment….puter is being all wonky….

    Sometimes I wonder

    How I’d ever make it through,

    Through this world without having you


    I just wouldn’t have a clue

    ‘Cause sometimes it seems

    Like this world’s closing in on me
    ,

    And there’s no way of breaking free

    And then I see you reach for me……

    Baby there’s nothing in this world

    that could ever do

    What a touch of your hand can do


    It’s like nothing that I ever knew

    When I see you smile

    I can face the world
    , oh oh,

    you know I can do anything

    When I see you smile

    I see a ray of light
    , oh oh,

    I see it shining right through the rain

    When I see you smile

    Oh yeah, baby when I see you smile at me


    Sooooo…..

  5. It is so filled with pathos and deja vu, too.

    But to deal with a state of ambivalence in another is not exactly what you need or any of us need at this stage — and I don’t mean that to be said as without empathy.  But the moving toward and pulling away stuff is something that I think we all dealt with in our early dating years — it wasn’t necessarily appealing then and is certainly not now. Nonetheless, it is such a sorrowful story.

    I am sure that your decision was not easily achieved.  And, writing this most honest and heartfelt accounting could not have been easy either.

    Thank you for all your devoted efforts of the past two years, OPOL.

  6. and i certainly dont recommend emotionally investing in someone who isnt in the same emotional space as you..

    however, i really, really hope that youre not denying yourself pleasures to concentrate ONLY on activism…because that’s really not fair to you.  

    we’re here, together, to share the load…and ill gladly carry a little more from time to time, if that gives you much-deserved respite from the constancy of the fight.  (you wont want me doing any artwork, tho…trust me on that 😉

    living the life we want is part of what we’re fighting for….so damn them and live the life you want right in their faces!!!  (i hear that every time a condom wrapper is torn open, clarence thomas’ eye twitches!!!)

  7. I’ve been blogging for just a bit longer than you.  But not much.  Glad to see you pass your two years.  And I’ve much admired your political writings/art.  Outstanding contribution to understanding.  To moving.  Thank you.

    Sorry it is taking such a toll on the personal life.  But we need our monks — our spiritual leaders — don’t we?

    Hope life treats you well.  Karma coming your way, no doubt for the lives you have tried to impact — save even — by increasing understanding.

    Best.

  8. I especially liked Sarah Brightman’s “Deliver Me.”

    You were honest, OPOL.  More than that a woman could not ask.

    Martina has some advice for those ladies.  Embed disabled but it’s worth the click…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v

  9. or maybe earlier in this one.

  10. That was, as you are, awesome

    QUESTION:What I see here is a new art form – blending narrative with Music Videos. Are you familiar with MOBEY? He is trying to do it live?????

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